1. Relevant Field
Systems and methods consistent with the present invention generally relate to the management of data. More particularly, systems and methods consistent with the invention relate to providing an on demand business process management system that takes advantage of client resources.
2. Background Information
Businesses and other organizations generate and/or receive a variety of data items and electronic information (broadly referred to hereafter as “business data”) during the course of their operation. The business data may be generated and/or received from various entities located in different regions and/or countries. To organize and manage operations of the organization, the organization may use various modeling languages to generate workflow models describing tasks of processes executed by the organization. These workflow models may graphically represent activities or tasks of business processes that assist non-technical and technical professionals in the implementation and execution of those processes. Models may also be used to specify ordering and conditions when certain tasks are to be performed, to specify necessary resources (e.g., employees, machinery, etc.), and to specify other interfaced entities (e.g., systems, applications, business partners, etc.).
Business process management suite (BPMS) environments may be set up as traditional “on-premise” environments that included local installations of BPMS software applications (e.g., BPMS software applications installed on hardware that is owned and maintained by the same company using the BPMS software applications) or “on-demand” offerings where a third-party service provider hosts the BPMS software applications. An on-premise installation, however, may not be appropriate in some situations. For example, an on-premise environment requires significant installation and maintenance costs, resulting in a large total cost of ownership (TCO) to the organization. The large TCO can thus make an on-premise installation unfeasible for small-scale scenarios where a customer runs only a few processes since a few number of processes may not be of sufficient value to justify the cost of an on-premise installation.
Because on-demand BPMS environments are hosted by a service provider (not the organization), they have lower TCOs. On-demand BPMS environments are able to maintain their low TCOs because their operational costs are absorbed by a third-party (e.g., a host), and the third-party can leverage the absorbed cost across customers using the same on-demand BPMS installation. As a result, on-demand environments have become increasingly popular. Still, a typical on-demand BPMS environment can also have limitations. For instance, an on-demand offering raises data privacy concerns since the organization's data is stored at the remote location of the third-party hosting the on-demand BPMS environment. Another potential drawback is that the third party can also be a bottleneck in terms of resource availability. For example, with the addition of each new client, the third-party host may need, for example, additional computing power, memory, disc space, and network bandwidth to serve the new client without impacting the performance of previous clients. In view of the above, it is desirable to provide methods and systems to provide improved business process management environment.